Month: February 2015

Black & White Sunday: Lining up in NYC

It was just pure chance that made me look up as we were heading into Grand Central Terminal en route for the subterranean Oyster Bar. I was thus able to snap two landmarks in one – both the Terminal’s pediment and the top of the Chrysler Building. Between the two is the glassy face of the Grand Hyatt Hotel. We were not staying there I hasten to add, but at the upcycled Beaux Arts Hotel Belleclaire on Broadway in Upper Westwide. I can recommend it. I can recommend the Oyster Bar too. On the day I took the photo it proved a haven in more ways that one. The sea food and Brooklyn beer were not only delicious, but the place was so COOL. Out on the streets there was May heat-wave going on with temperatures of over 100 degrees. We had already spent most of our few days in the city sticking to the shade in Central Park, and drinking copious glasses of iced coffee at the Loeb Boathouse cafe. Very good it was too, but there’s only so much of this you can do when you have come thousands of miles to see Manhattan. Finally we forced ourselves out into the baking streets …

By the way, this reflected framing of the shot is a feature of Windows Photo Gallery which I use for writing my blog posts. I thought I would try it out for Paula’s challenge.

Paula’s Black & White Sunday: Lines

Going All Symmetrical At Portmeirion

Surely only a wizard could have conjured this place – or so I thought, aged six, when we, the Ashford family first made pilgrimage to Portmeirion on the North Wales coast.

Story continues with more photos at Arch Wizard of Wales: Clough Williams-Ellis “Architect Errant”
Symmetry

Thursday’s Special: Seeing Red

I’m in love with the Japanese crab apple tree in my garden at Sheinton Street. There is hardly a moment in the year when it does not give pleasure. Even now in February there are still a few tiny apples on its bare branches – minimally disposed like a left over Christmas tree that someone forgot to undress. The black bird still visits, although by now the apples have been frosted and lost their bloom.

But then I also know that by the time the last one has fallen, there will be tight rosy-red buds bursting to make the next crop, bees permitting. And while I think of it, I’m grateful to fellow blogger, Mélanie at Mon Terrain de Jeux who tells me that crab apples sound much lovelier in French, and I agree – pommes sauvages.

On the other hand, my little tree is so finely wrought and well bred, and its fruit so exquisite, that I can imagine no situation when it might be tempted to wildness – unlike its large, unruly English cousins that grow in our farm hedgerows. Those I raid in October for their not so pretty fruit to make jars of crab apple jelly. (How could I possibly pick my own pommes sauvages?). The jelly is delicious on toast and croissants, and the jars glow like jewels as the hot jelly is poured into them. Mmmm.

More things to look forward to then: blossom, bees, pommes sauvages, toast…

For Paula’s Thursday’s Special challenge ‘Red’ at Lost in Translation

“Tell my wife I am trolling Atlantis…

…and I still have my hands at the wheel.”

My mind seems to be drawn to the sea just now, hence the posting of this video. But what a line this is – “Tell my wife I am trolling Atlantis…” As a writer and teller of tales, I have a huge admiration for the storytelling talents of songwriter, Billy Joel. He is a troubadour of our times (well of mine anyway); a poet, musician and social commentator. So I hope you enjoy this multi-stranded creation, musical flash-fiction if you like, and so well constructed. Please do look at the full lyrics too, at the link below.

The Downeaster Alexa by Billy Joel

Full lyrics HERE

One Word Photo Challenge: Seafoam

Here are some more Lamu photos (see previous post). Some of you will have seen the top one before, but it is one of my favourites, and I thought the colour of awning fits with Jennifer Nichole Wells’ one word seafoam challenge. It is a colour that I anyway associate with the Indian Ocean. This shot was taken on a dhow taxi in the middle of a tropical downpour. It was December, the monsoon season, and we had just flown in to the little local airport on Manda Island. The strait between the two islands looked suddenly grey and forbidding. It seemed strangely cold too in the midst of the hot season, and not the best start to our four-day Christmas break from Nairobi.

But then the rain passed. This is the waterfront of Lamu stone town, one of the best surviving Swahili settlements on the Indian Ocean seaboard, and a world heritage site. You will have to look harder here for the gentle shade of seafoam.

Lamu is a captivating place. I was so impressed by our four days there that I wrote a teen novel, Sea Running, published by Macmillan Pacesetters for the African children’s literature market. It’s a good yarn about drug runners and first love. It also has a splash of seafoam on the cover.

For more posts on Lamu:

Dhow-dreaming

The Swahili

Christmas on Lamu

Black & White Sunday

Today Paula’s guest blogger over at Lost in Translation is Debbie Smyth who many will know from her own blog Travel with Intent. Today she is setting us the challenge to ‘let the shapes shine through’. This is what she says:

For me the most important point about monochrome is that by removing the distraction of colour, the photographer is able to direct the viewer to the key elements of the image. Going monochrome is one of several tools we have as a photographer that allows us to provide focus.

The composition of my own photo is perhaps a little ‘busy’ in this B & W version (it could have done without the pole), but I like the play of light on the dhow sails, the clouds, and Lali’s straw hat. It was taken in Manda Strait, in Kenya’s Lamu archipelago.

For the story behind the photo, please go HERE. But now here are more versions. The second one down is a ‘red filter’ edit, followed by sepia. Let me know what you think.

Scaling the Heights: Great Zimbabwe

Between the walls of the Great Enclosure. The wall behind me dates from the 1400s, the one in front with its less skilled brickwork dates from the 1200s AD.

For more about the amazing Middle Ages kingdoms of Southern Africa please see:

Abandoned: Great Zimbabwe

Scale

Jumbo Sizes: S, M, L, XL

Elephants in Kenya’s Maasai Mara

Stripes and High Rises: Diversity

You could say that Nairobi’s game park begins where the city stops. It is the only city in the world with a natural, unenclosed wildlife reserve on its peripheries: wilderness and urban sprawl side by side. There is of course an electric fence along the urban perimeter to divide man from beast, but the city is always pressing against the boundary. To the south the park is open to the Athi and Kapiti Plains to allow migrating herbivores such as wildebeest (there are a couple in the background) to come and go. These grasslands are important feeding grounds in the wet season, and so it is essential for the health and wildlife diversity of the park that the southern corridor remains open. When we left Nairobi in 2000 there were fears that it would soon be closed by encroaching farmers, and community initiatives were being devised to avoid this.

By African game park standards the park is very small, 117 square kilometres, but it supports a breath-taking array of animals – lions, cheetahs, leopards, rhino, all the antelopes, and a host of small game. Only elephants are absent. The birdlife is equally diverse with over 500 species. And despite the proximity of the city, there still are wild places where the high rises cannot be seen on the skyline.

There is also another kind of diversity in this photo: the zebra’s stripes. Every individual has its own livery. Once when we were on a game drive on a private ranch in Zambia, our very tipsy guide was insistent that we grasp this fact. “Every zebra’s butticles have different markings,” he declaimed, “so their offspring know how to recognise their mamas.” I have been grateful ever since for that gift of the word ‘butticle’.

Lost in Translation: Diversity

One Word Photo Challenge: Strawberry

I’m being utterly literal in my response to Jennifer Nichole Wells’ latest challenge. Well, what better example of the colour strawberry than an actual strawberry, and ones that were growing so happily last year on my allotment ? Also they look so juicy, and remind my cold toes that summer will happen, if not quite yet. I’m also thinking – looking again at Jennifer’s colour swatch – than I can also use a shot of my raspberries to illustrate ‘strawberry’, or is that being too perverse?

Anyway, it’s clear where my thought are heading. February is the month when things can be started off in my polytunnel – this in preparation for the spring planting. There are potatoes to chit, broad beans and peas to sow, and excitement is building like rising sap. So much to look forward to.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge